“Time is such a frustrating commodity. You can’t bargain with it. It just passes, snickering as it goes by, I suppose.”

Patty Smith didn’t have much time left when she wrote those words, and she knew it. But she made the most of what she had, soaking up everything she could in two quarters at Stanford before dying of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1981. The Punahou cross country runner and 1979 Honolulu Marathon finisher was 19.

But Patty lives on in spirit, and in the aching muscles and sweaty smiles of runners and walkers participating in the Mango Days 5K each year.

Her parents, Kit and Margie, are always among them. Kit — a running marvel — is still one of the top senior runners. Margie walked the course this year because of recent cataract surgery.

She received a pleasant but not uncommon request when she crossed the finish line at Magic Island on Sunday.

“Kit rushed over to me and said, ‘You have to meet this guy,’ ” Margie said.

Every other year or so, in her estimation, someone who can relate to the Smiths, first-hand, introduces him or herself. It is always special. Extremely sad, but also in a way joyous — something like when you meet relatives at a wake. But when it is a child, your child … the rest of us can only imagine.

It’s what sportswriter Frank Deford, who lost his daughter Alex to cystic fibrosis, inscribed in a book to Kit. They are members of a “sorrowful fraternity.”

This time it was Jim Hartner, of Gresham, Ore. His son, Matt, died last year in his sleep at age 30.

Matt was a high school volleyball coach. Like the Smiths did for Patty, Jim Hartner started a running event in Matt’s memory. There is also a big three-day club volleyball tournament now called the Oregon Matt Hartner Memorial Classic; Marcus Mariota made an appearance this year.

Two of Jim’s daughters and their husbands canceled a vacation to Hawaii last year after Matt’s death. So Jim brought them, and six other family members, here. And when they found out about the Mango Days 5K, honoring Patty Smith, they knew when they would come, for Matt.

Matt’s brother-in-law Andre Stickney and his daughter — Matt’s 8-year-old niece, Hannah — ran the race. They finished together, Hannah winning her age group.

You wouldn’t think something as basic as distance running would change much. But it has since Kit and Patty Smith started to put in the miles 40 years ago. Before the running boom it was known as the loneliest sport.

In the 1970s, though, all kinds of people took to the streets. Running gradually became more inclusive and less elitist; it is a welcoming community.

“It’s a very warm group of people,” Margie Smith said.

And it is a group that has helped the Smiths derive something positive from their grief.

“When you lose a child, it’s a big hole and you want to do your best to make it meaningful if at all possible,” Margie said. “The book (Patty’s journal, “Mango Days”) was very meaningful. There’s a scholarship at Punahou and the run raises money (for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society). You take your pain and do something useful with it.”

Patty would approve of it all, her father said.

“She would be bathed in tears if she knew there was a run in her memory,” Kit said. “I’m getting tears in my eyes now thinking of it.”

And who knew it would become a blueprint for a family from Oregon?

“The bond between the Smiths and us is forever,” Jim Hartner said. “What they did is exactly what we want to do.”

Reach Star-Advertiser sports columnist Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com, his “Quick Reads” blog at staradvertiser.com and twitter.com/davereardon.